The Codex of Arceus
by Birdboy
Summary: A treasure hunter finds an ancient book in Mount Coronet which details wondrous and forgotten legends and claims to be written by Arceus. Sudden earthquakes strike Sinnoh, while across the world, Jirachi falls to Earth and challenges the Battle Subway. The entries in this ancient Pokemon Codex offer a key to understanding these events, and perhaps to saving the world from them.
1. Chapter 1

Although Jasper grew up in the shadow of Mount Coronet, he had never entirely believed in Dialga, Palkia, and Giratina, let alone Arceus. He certainly understood why the priests of the area found it useful to keep the old legends alive, and how the pilgrims from around the world boosted the economy of the desolate, mountainous center of Sinnoh. If anything, Jasper was amazed by the fact that the rest of the world, although often using their own legends to try the same trick, accepted Arceus' claims to supremacy over all creation.

Jasper wasn't sure if he had crossed the line onto sacred ground when he found the object – the traditions of Mount Coronet always struck him as both esoteric and superstitious, and hallowed ground or not, it was the same mass of wild pokemon, tall grass, and snow. Perhaps on the mountain's outside, Jasper would be able to determine if he was below the Spear Pillar (although the extension regarding the Hall of Origin, which no man alive today has played the Azure Flute to visit, was bizarre and indecipherable) but inside the poorly mapped, labyrinthine mountain, it would take a far more pious boy than him to bother.

Later in life, Jasper would insist the tome had not been stolen – that the question of its location at the time was a moot one, for it could not be temple robbery if the priests had been unaware it existed to begin with. Some would believe him, others would protest, and the positions they would take had far more to do with their opinions of the document itself and the question of its authenticity than they did any actual evidence about his actual guilt or innocence. But for now, it was nothing more than potential treasure – although with a book this ancient, he wasn't about to sell it off without reading it first.

Jasper was able to hold off on his curiosity until he returned to his home – a cabin in the mountains – because while he couldn't tell the book's age right away, it appeared centuries old, and he was of no mind to risk damaging it by exposing its precious pages to the open air. It was a text as bizarre as it was fascinating, and the claims it made about every known pokemon were so strange as to be beyond his comprehension.

The tome was clearly a pokedex of some sort – and he wondered briefly if finding it made him one of the legendary Pokedex holders, like Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum so many generations before. But this codex was not much like those handed out by the pokemon professors – it was already completed, and offered no hint to its authorship on any table of contents. The author claimed strange pieces of information and referred frequently to human knowledge in a sense that they stood apart from it, but not until he reached the 493rd page did he have any inkling the text claimed to be personally written by Arceus almighty.

Given the plausibility of many of the other claims contained therein, he felt safe in dismissing this idea. Perhaps the world had a first cause, and had not existed from time immemorial – and given their greater age, it made sense for said cause to be a pokemon and not a human, and it being able to shift between types made a certain bit of sense as a way to originate the eighteen types. But the rest – from the drawings shown in the temples to the sanctity of the Hall of Origin and the stories told of it ruling over the gods and giving a special role to Man, to the idea of said cause being alive today and burying a pokedex in Mount Coronet – was nothing but pious absurdity.

And a book claiming, among other things, that Sinnoh was a dormant Torterra, Unown the progenitors of speech and language, Jirachi a harbinger of destruction, and that Arceus himself had lost to a heroic Smeargle's sketch was certainly not the work of a quadrupedal god's divine pen! At best, it was written by a priest to formulate old doctrines and attributed to Arceus in the manner of many religions; far more likely, it was an ancient, imaginative hoax.

The book was fascinating, and perhaps it could be Jasper's ticket to riches from some museum, collector, or temple; it seemed like a more ancient and valuable treasure than any he had found before in his fourteen-year life. But it was certainly not true.

* * *

The Battle Tower in Sinnoh had banned this pokemon, long ago. Legally, perhaps Unova's Battle Subway, where it had landed for this millennium's journey, might have done so too; if so, the prohibition had long since been forgotten.

Theoretically, the Battle Subway – like the Tower – was only for trainers. And not just any trainers; it was a place for the greatest of the great, those who found that the organized competitions, for all the fame and fortune they offered, gave them an insufficient opportunity to test their skills. Let the Elite Four hog the spotlight, and endure the constant challenges from uncompetitive trainers and the media questions; the true masters no longer had any need of such trifles. In the old days, bored champions would retire to the wilderness, often not long after winning, and other champions, equally tired of the spotlight and wondering about their abilities, would travel into dangerous lands to seek them out.

The Subway in Unova – like the Frontier in Hoenn, the Tower in Sinnoh (and its late-created successor in Kanto-Johto) and the Maison in Kalos – had grown out of these challenges, and their disparate structures reflected the disparate sites which had become the centers of these competitions.

In Kalos, it was a noble's summer estate, which she had offered to the ownership of any who could defeat her in battle – on the condition that they too relinquish it to any who defeated them. As elite trainers grew in number, and the competition grew too regular, the turnover became too rapid for the king's government to keep up – and to keep the constant challenges in check, increasing numbers of successive victories were required to gain the right to battle the Chatelaine.

In Hoenn, it was a shrine for Rayquaza which gave sanctuary to deserters from Aqua and Magma's endless wars. In an era where powerful pokemon and trainers were themselves a vital military resource, the priests learned to battle to ensure their offer of sanctuary could be more than empty words. Skilled warlords who had turned their back on violence spent their time on one-on-one struggles, and even in eras of peace, the Battle Frontier was said to have the strongest trainers in the land. The temple's rituals changed in this era, as powerful trainers from across the land lacking Aqua or Magma affiliations flooded in; most were reinterpreted into the new forms of battle which today distinguish the Frontier.

In greater Sinnoh, champions secluded themselves in a sparsely settled wilderness on the island to the north, in the cave around Stark Mountain – much as Kanto-Johto's champions had done in Mount Silver. This was an extremely dangerous island, whose wild pokemon could be as powerful as most trainers – and unlike in trainer battles, losing to a wild pokemon here was often fatal. Although the island itself was larger than Sinnoh, most of it was too cold and remote to support much of a human population; only the warmth of Heatran allowed for a settlement at the isle's southern tip. Sinnoh's champions found worthy rivals in the trainers of this village, who had been forced to train their pokemon to greatness out purely for self-defense, but the custom of seclusion in Stark Mountain led to far too many deaths along the way. Typically, it was the challengers eaten by wild pokemon on the way to challenge trainers of legend, but it was the loss of the greatest champion of the age to a freak volcanic eruption – one credited to Heatran's wrath – that galvanized the locals into action. They then built a grand tower that could be seen from Sinnoh and advertised their presence to the world, and it was rumored that the island's strongest trainer – the so-called Tower Tycoon – teamed up with Heatran himself whenever a visiting trainer won enough battles.

And in Unova, it was the underground subway; battling on moving, all but empty late-night trains added an element of skill and danger, and the threat of disruption from a local ground pokemon – most often the Excadrill, whose habitat the trains had disrupted and who the trainers were paid to protect the trains from – but occasionally Dugtrio or even Rhyperior would crash through the windows for a challenge. Perhaps Jirachi had chosen to challenge Unova because of its long tradition of accepting sufficiently strong trainerless pokemon; while legendaries elsewhere would often satiate their desire for championships by submitting to a great trainer (if temporarily, because even human lives seem very temporary compared to the lives of the gods), the power of Jirachi's wish was far too dangerous in the wrong hands.

There were those who questioned if even Jirachi could manipulate its thousand-year orbit precisely enough to land in Nimbasa City, but it was a more impressive story to think it had, and people would never refuse a good story when it came to the ways of the gods. Nor would they hesitate to spread it – and since the rise of the Internet and the Global Trade System, news had traveled fast around the world.

Especially news like this. The Battle Subway had never attracted quite the attention of the Unova League – partially because of its origins as a secret competition, partially because the dangers of televising a match in a moving train were as great as those of participating in one, but mostly because it was simply so rare for a trainer – even a champion - to win enough matches in a row to approach a milestone the public cared about. But forty-eight triumphs in a row was enough to make international news even from a human trainer – and when it came from a god seen once every thousand years, it was enough to catch the world's eyes.

When Jasper saw the news, he thought momentarily of Jirachi's entry in his codex, and its chilling opening line: "the seven days every millennium or so when Jirachi is awake are among the most dangerous in human history." But Jasper soon put these thoughts to rest; the wicked genie who twisted every wish into chaos and catastrophe bore no more resemblance to the truth than any of the other fanciful stories in this tome, from Bulbasaur bulbs offering immortality to the strange, long-forgotten, once-heretical myths repeated here about nearly every god.

That said, it was late tonight, and the match was soon; watching Jirachi battle on a train might be a nice enough way to pass the time. He wasn't much of a trainer – he only had one pokemon, and Bibarel was more a tool for exploration than a warrior (although it had proved strong enough to protect him so far) but this was a big enough match to tune in for.

* * *

The train was moving, as it always had – and despite the idea of a subway with one station for each battle providing an oft-repeated metaphor for a trainer's journey to greatness, the subway in truth ran in a seven-station loop beneath Nimbasa City. The seventh leg of the journey was the last one before any trainer could take a break – and many did, although some battled continuously - and the home of all the greatest matches, so it was also the place where the brave few willing to be reporters tended to board.

Although it was true Jirachi had won forty-eight matches in a row, it had not personally participated in all of them. As a trainer, it had to remain conscious to command its teammates; as a pokemon, it was forbidden any healing items which might restore it after a knockout, so in every battle it had entered, it had appeared last, and proved unwilling to switch in until its teammates were both knocked out.

The Clefable and Wigglytuff who accompanied Jirachi had done so since it fell from space, and had likely traveled with it on the same meteor. Clefable was a member of the ancient Cleffa asteroid colony which had often approached Jirachi's meteor, strengthened and evolved by a god's magic; Wigglytuff was one of many of its species jarred from the moon by a meteor impact, and who grabbed onto the nearest piece of space debris in an effort to descend to an inhabited world.

Clefable, now as always, served as Jirachi's lead.

The Subway Master's roster always consisted of powerful Unovan pokemon, but which ones varied between challengers – as might be expected, given that challengers were themselves often years apart. His second team, which tested a much larger number of trainers at twenty-one wins, was well-known – his first choice, however, was shrouded in mystery, and Battle Subway fans had long speculated about which retired members of his second team had been promoted to his first choice, and which were simply rotated out or given away.

He opened with Haxorus.

The green, scaly dragon stomped its black three-toed foot at the light pink fairy, and if it was unnerved in any way, Clefable's almost featureless body did nothing to express it. Indeed, the only two unnerved in the train were the two humans – the Subway Master, because this was a clearly unfavorable matchup, and the cameraman, because even though he had volunteered for the mission, the train starting to move and the large pokemon summoned had driven home the danger of the Battle Subway. The cameraman clung to the side of the train with one hand while filming with the other; the Subway Master stood calmly with perfect balance as he again lifted his pokeball.

"Haxorus, return! Go, Durant!"

This particular Clefable's ancestors may have left the moon many generations ago, but they still passed down the lunar techniques they learned there. As the armored pokemon emerged from its ball, a sphere four times the pokemon's size which glistened with the blue-white hue of moonlight slammed into the Durant. The ant smashed into the side of the train, inches from the window and viewers around the world (Jasper among them) were treated to a closeup of the Durant's injuries as the cameraman hurriedly ducked and pointed his camera up, shaking along with the train from the force of the collision.

But the subway train had experienced much fiercer fights, and stayed on track, although the announcers (broadcasting from the studio, not on board) took pains to inform the audience that if a pokemon is ejected from the vehicle in the course of the battle, it is considered to be knocked out. They also informed the more casual viewers that Clefable's attack had been Moonblast – for although legends claimed Jirachi could speak, if it had commanded Clefable's move it had done so through telepathy.

There are very few bug pokemon who can be seriously injured by throwing them into walls, and Durant's steel exoskeleton shrugged off much of the damage from the moonblast itself – an attack which might have knocked out frailer bug pokemon such as Accelgor. The Durant easily scurried back to its six feet and up to the roof of the subway car, and the Subway Master gave his Iron Ant pokemon its first order.

"Iron Head!" Durant tucked back its antennae to ensure a headfirst collision, stretched its bladed mandibles to each side, then tilted its head forward and launched from the roof of the car, following up a devastating headbutt with an unannounced but very painful spiked stab. The Clefable attempted to brace itself, and perhaps on a normal battlefield it would have succeeded; the collision pushed it back into the closed doors, and the impact with the handle finished Jirachi's lead pokemon off.

A pokeball floated out from Jirachi's left wish tag, seemingly materializing out of nowhere, and recalled the fainted Clefable. Another ball emerged likewise from the right, summoning Jirachi's Wigglytuff comrade.

The pink, roundish, rabbit-eared pokemon inflated immediately after its release, sucking in air like a balloon and nearly doubling in size.

"Quick, Durant! Knock it off balance with an Iron Head!" The ant launched again at the balloon pokemon and connected squarely at the center of the white on its chest. Wigglytuff absorbed the hit, but winced in pain and found itself pushed backwards as it exhaled like a Firebreather.

The blast of fire – shaped like the kanji for "big" as befit its vast size and power, and not dissimilar to a stick figure with diagonal legs - mostly flew harmlessly at the roof of the train, but Wigglytuff had turned its tiny mouth slightly at the last minute, and one of the attack's trailing legs of flame engulfed the steel bug's thorax.

When the flame moved on, Wigglytuff deflated to its normal size, albeit badly shaken up by the Iron Head it had suffered, and Durant lay unconscious on the train's floor.

The Subway Master next summoned Haxorus for a second time, causing the announcers and viewers the world over to question his strategy; he had already recalled the pokemon earlier in the match to avoid fighting one fairy-type, so why send it to fight another one?

"X-Scissor." he ordered softly, and as the red blades surrounding the dragon's head glistened with a swordlike shine, Jirachi and a few of the more learned members of the audience understood. Haxorus charged towards Wigglytuff's bruised center like a target, then whipped its head to the left and the blade broke the balloon pokemon's skin.

But Wigglytuff did not pop; it exploded, and when the dust settled an unconscious Haxorus lay beside its deflated opponent – one whose pointed ears made its evolutionary stage unmistakeable, but who was now barely larger than an Igglybuff.

Again, a pokeball appeared from behind the right wish tag – this time, to recall Wigglytuff to its home. Again, the Subway Master recalled his Haxorus – but this time, it was unable to battle.

"Terrakion, go!"

The rails shook. The caves trembled. Miners all across Unova stopped to pay their respects – only for an instant, but they stopped all the same, because they mined only at Terrakion's suffrance. For the god of rock – the god of caves and mountains, the Sword of Justice from the caverns, a giant, stocky ungulate with great black horns that curved downward like pickaxes, whose body was the gray of its rocky home – had been summoned. And Jirachi floated forward from its seat at the corner of the car, prepared to meet another god in battle for the first time since it landed on Earth.

"So, you already have one." Jirachi thought, the words appearing in the Subway Master's head as if they had been spoken, but they came with no sound, only telepathy.

He shrugged in response. "Legends train legends. Whenever a god feels like battling, or a trainer becomes strong enough to subjugate them, they come here. Some trainers in the Subway's history have even had three, and I think one of my counterparts around the world still does. I'm surprised you haven't fought one already."

"One god's power is enough for any man to have. Another shall claim my wish."

"You're still a wild pokemon. If you think I'm too dangerous to capture you... then prove it to me in battle! Terrakion, Earthquake!"

Terrakion reared up on its hind legs, then stomped the ground with its front ones, cracking all the way through the floor of the subway car – which, for all its technology, still could not stand up to a battle of this magnitude. Jirachi slowly waved its white hands as it twirled its long yellow ribbons, picking an attack at random – but the Subway Master would later allege that there was no true randomness against a god of luck and wishes, and it had manipulated the metronome to its will. For Jirachi stomped the floor as ferociously as Terrakion had, and the two earthquakes met in the center of the rail car, as the cameraman and subway master alike clung desperately to their seats, and both pokemon reeled from the legendary force of one another's attacks.

* * *

In far-off Sinnoh, halfway around the world, at that very moment an earthquake struck. To most residents, it was of little importance – but some lost power, and Jasper's miniature television was knocked from its perch on his desk and shattered, and the walls of his cabin didn't look far behind.

He fled his home with only his wallet, Bibarel's poke ball, and the ancient codex he had discovered earlier in the day. He had picked up the latter instinctively, but it seemed like a good enough idea – Jasper was not a boy who abandoned treasures without finding out what they were worth. The bag in which he kept most of his pokemon's supplies, such as potions and poison heals, would have to be left behind; he was unsure if he could get to the other side of his cabin to grab it without being crushed, and had used up most of its contents on the day's journey anyway.

As the earth shook, Mount Coronet itself wobbled, and beneath the sliding rocks of the mountain he thought he saw the outline of the spike on a Torterra's back, only a thousand times larger.

Jasper thought he was hallucinating – delirious from a long night buried in an ancient book and then staying up late to watch a Battle Subway match. Maybe some of the dust he had blown off the text wasn't dust – some of those old religions incorporated psychoactive drugs into their rituals, although he had never heard of lacing a codex with one.

But the claims made in Torterra's entry – that a large, sleeping Torterra becomes an overgrown mountain, and that Sinnoh was the largest Torterra of all – were all too plausible to ignore, especially after watching Jirachi's battle bring disaster to his home. If he hadn't grabbed the pokedex, he would've surely gone back for it.

If the ancient pokedex was accurate, if the Torterra named Sinnoh was waking up, he wasn't safe here.

For trainers of flying pokemon (at least, those with sufficient speed or endurance) – or indeed, for trainers of hardier water pokemon like Lapras and Wailord, who were at home in oceans and carried a human with no real effort – escape could mean going virtually anywhere in the world. Planes and boats meant the same, but that required getting to a port (whether air or sea) and he feared being caught in the chaos of a mass exodus.

There were two locations which Jasper could feasibly reach with nothing more than his feet and his Bibarel. To the south of Sinnoh was Fiore, a peaceful land dominated by Rangers where the very idea of pokemon battles was seen as barbaric. It was a land which lacked for strong pokemon, where the local authorities would be powerless to defend themselves against the chaos of Jirachi's wish, a land he was sure would soon be overcome by anarchy.

For a moment, Jasper nonetheless considered riding out the disaster there – being a pokemon trainer alone gave him a leg up on the locals, and if society was to collapse there was something to be said for making the most of it. But there were other people in Sinnoh with far stronger pokemon who would surely get the same idea. Transiting through Almia en route to Kanto or Johto was an even longer journey, and not being on a waking Torterra, although an improvement, was not in itself a promise of safety against the powers of a corrupted Jirachi wish.

But he had another option – a somewhat closer one to home. For the small village on the island north of Sinnoh was the home of the Battle Tower – and at a time like this, it was the safest and most dangerous place on Earth.

* * *

Author's Note: The Pokedex Jasper finds is indeed the Pokedex fic that can be found on my profile. A lot of people have written over the years asking permission to do something based on it some way (which is granted by default) and I wanted to try my hand at it myself.


	2. Chapter 2

The strangely timed earthquake which had shattered Jasper's cabin, although severe, was not beyond the capacity of Sinnoh's government to handle with a modicum of international aid. Few residents of the region considered it a sign of things to come, and those few were dismissed as the usual apocalyptic cranks – and the vast majority of them were. A few others did choose to migrate in response to the earthquake – some were from Jasper's own Mount Coronet region, which was hit hard, while most others had resided in the area of Sunyshore City and claimed they had seen the harbor open its eyes.

Most of these migrants did not leave their home island, for the story of the Torterra named Sinnoh had drifted from fact into legend, and by now even the legend was known only to a few scholars and the reader of one dusty codex. Those who did leave Sinnoh outright primarily made their way to Almia, and the Fight Area to Sinnoh's north saw only a few more than the usual challengers arrive that day.

Weakest among these few was a single trainer with a lone Bibarel who had exhausted itself in the journey across the strait. As the pair drifted into sight of the harbor, they were approached by a remarkably large Psyduck whose eyes seemed peeled back with rage, and who swam towards them with as much surety as the various Magikarp and Finneon on the Sinnoh side of the strait had when swimming away.

For the first time since leaving his home, the dangers of the northern route struck Jasper, and he had ample cause to fear for his life: this Psyduck wanted battle, he wasn't much as a swimmer, and his only way to fight back was also his ride. He placed his pokedex on Bibarel's back as a held item in the hopes of keeping it dry, then slid off its fur into the water, grasping his pokemon's back legs like a kickboard; it would be easier for Bibarel to battle that way.

The Psyduck continued paddling quickly forward, at far more ease in the water than Jasper's primarily land-bound rodent pokemon, although he suspected that his Bibarel might prove the faster of the two on land. Once it had closed the gap between them, the Psyduck raised its front claws in a continuation of its swimming motion. Yet Psyduck's paddle-like swipes no longer attacked the water, but struck Bibarel's goofy face, and drew blood with each of its five scratches.

"We can't win this!" a desperate Jasper cried, thinking for a moment of what _losing_ would really mean in this situation; would the Psyduck devour his body, or would it be claimed for some other pokemon, like Sharpedo? Would anyone realize what had become of him if he drowned? Would the book he found, now held on Bibarel's back, be lost forever? But it wasn't like him to give up until the very last moment.

"Bibarel, push Psyduck away with a Strength, then swim to shore!" The paws which had toughened themselves on a hundred boulders, but rarely had cause to fight another pokemon, did manage to put Psyduck off a little with their shove. The beaver and its trainer were able to take advantage of this by turning around the Psyduck and continuing to swim forward – but their assailant looked all but unharmed by the attack, and began to gain on the two as soon as it regained its balance.

If the Fight Area had been located further inland, Jasper's adventure would have ended with this battle. But it was a port town full of elite trainers, and one of them had been near enough the harbor and had good enough eyesight to see a trainer struggling in the distance to escape an angry wild pokemon.

The young woman in question hurriedly summoned her Gyarados, then climbed onto its back and pointed across the water. The sea serpent flew menacingly towards the Psyduck, a few feet above the water's edge, and drew its attention away from the wounded Bibarel and its trainer with its vast and terrifying visage. The Psyduck, frightened but not cowed, turned to face its new foe and opened its mouth – but before it could launch its first strike, the Gyarados's long, segmented, dragonlike tail dipped from the sky and smashed into the Psyduck's duck-billed face.

The woman dropped a Net Ball into the water, which absorbed the Psyduck in its light, then steered her Gyarados diagonally back towards the harbor in the direction of Jasper and his Bibarel. Her Gyarados acrobatically tossed her new Psyduck's ball high into the air with its tail while turning, and the woman easily caught it and returned it to her belt while her Gyarados descended.

"Your Bibarel looks badly hurt. Hop on, kid," she said.

Jasper nodded and opened his pokeball to recall his pokemon, together with his pokedex, which had luckily stayed dry. He then wrapped his arms around one of the back segments of the trainer's Gyarados and clung onto it for dear life. Noting its new passenger's obvious discomfort, the Gyarados carried him out of the water at a leisurely pace and let him off at the docks of Fight Area instead of flying all the way to the Pokemon Center.

"Thanks," a visibly relieved Jasper said, catching his breath. "You saved me back there," he added, then paused as if searching for her name.

"I guess we haven't introduced ourselves yet. It's Fisherwoman Andrea," she said, returning her Gyarados to its ball as the two walked towards the Center.

"My name's Jasper," the exhausted and soaked boy replied.

"PKMN Trainer Jasper?" Andrea asked.

"I'm a Ruin Maniac... though the town I lived in is small and my first name is rare, so I'm not really used to mentioning it," Jasper answered.

"Not anymore. I saw the Pokedex your Bibarel was carrying. You're a Pokedex Holder – and that means you use PKMN Trainer, just like Red and Blue did back in ancient times."

Jasper thought about her words. Comparing himself to those trainers was way too arrogant for him – he may have shared an item with them (if only in the loosest sense, for their pokedexes were electronic), but they had battled legendaries and powerful teams bent on world domination and saved the world more than once. And he? He struggled to take down a wild Psyduck.

Even if Jasper took the term as denoting something other than skill, such as ascending beyond categorizations of trainer class, was he really a pokemon trainer at all with only one pokemon, and one who used exclusively practical moves at that? Although he had certainly used Bibarel for self-defense from time to time, its primary occupation had always been as an obstacle clearer. And if that document truly was a _pokedex, _with all the term implied – and not just a codex or index of pokemon - it was as a treasure hunter, as a Ruin Maniac, that he had obtained it to begin with.

On the other hand, there was so much greatness associated with the term that it was a tempting self-appellation, even if he wasn't entirely sure if he could live up to it. And now that Jirachi had fallen to Earth, perhaps it was time for him to become a hero worthy of that title – the Pokedex had spoken of a week, and if so, he didn't have long. "I don't want to give up being a Ruin Maniac. But on the other hand..." he said with a smile, "I do like the sound of PKMN Trainer Jasper."

The two trainers arrived in the pokemon center and handed over a poke ball to the pokemon nurse at the front desk, but both Andrea's newly captured Psyduck and Jasper's Bibarel had been badly wounded and would require more attention than a few seconds in the healing machine could cure. The town had its share of Chansey for serious injuries, but they spent the bulk of their time in the Battle Tower rapidly healing the winners of every match; the Tower had seen a flurry of challenges at this point in the day, so only one was left in the Pokemon Center to heal wounds suffered outside of that tournament.

"So what brings you all the way here? Your Bibarel doesn't look strong enough for the Battle Hall, and you don't seem to be carrying any other Pokeballs on you..." Fisherwoman Andrea inquired. "You know, there's a reason you need to make it through the League preliminaries to even be allowed on the boat to this city. It might seem elitist, but it's for your own safety. If I hadn't been there..."

"I know that!" Jasper responded. "But I'm not sure anywhere else is safer right now. You saw the pokedex I found, right?"

"Even Red went through the gyms," Andrea answered.

"Red had a lot more time than I do. And... I might be out of time already." Jasper wondered to himself what he was saying as the words escaped his mouth. He had fled here for safety from the coming cataclysm, not to try to become a hero. Yet somehow words of heroic determination had begun to flow effortlessly from his mouth, and he didn't disagree with them. "What happened at the end of Jirachi's match?"

"So you watched it too?" Fisherwoman Andrea said.

"Yeah, but the earthquake knocked out my power before the match finished."

"Cobalion fell out of the train and was disqualified," she said.

"That's a relief," he answered, and his breaths showed the palpable relief on his face; this was no exaggeration.

"I still don't follow you. What's all this about? What does that match have to do with you crossing the strait to Sinnoh's north?" Andrea asked.

Jasper opened his pokedex, bringing it instantly to page 385; the book was well-worn and ancient, but he had reread _that_ page enough times lately that it was easy enough for his thumb to locate. The two read the passage from its text – the brief story of a serial wish corrupter who doomed humanity one way or another every thousand years, an entry which concluded with "Jirachi, like the asteroid on which it fell to Earth 65 million years ago, is a disaster which can not be prepared for or mitigated, only averted by luck. So all we can do is hope the next person to find it will wish for it to grant wishes no more."

"And this is why I have to talk to the Tower Tycoon... or anyone else powerful enough to stop Jirachi before it grants someone's wish."

* * *

Sinnoh's Tower Tycoon was a great trainer even by the lofty standards of that position: the most skillful in living memory, if not in the Tower's long history. For ten years he had held onto his current office on the tower's forty-ninth floor, and he had easily dispatched every challenger to make it that high – most of them without losing a single pokemon.

The Tycoon was an arrogant man when he began his pokemon journey, and victory had only furthered his arrogance. He pined for the solitude of elite trainers like Red in the pre-Tower era, had conquered the Battle Tower with only the faintest awareness that this came with ruling the town below, and had held onto it only because he was too proud to intentionally lose a match – although he gave some thought at times to disappearing outright, reasoning that he would hold onto the Tower for the rest of his life and they would have to figure out how to replace him one way or another.

But for all his skill as a pokemon trainer, the Tower Tycoon was wholly incompetent in that title's other traditional obligation as village leader. He considered a trainer's skill with pokemon to be equivalent to their value as a human being, and as such only granted an audience to those capable of conquering twenty floors of his tower. Urgent social problems were often addressed only through a series of forfeits and thrown matches, although to his credit, the Tycoon would take care of the problems as best he could, provided the trainer who finally reached him was strong enough.

PKMN Trainer Jasper, however, was not strong enough by any stretch of the imagination – he didn't even have enough pokemon to enter the Tower.

Fisherwoman Andrea was stronger, and had managed a respectable showing at the Pokemon League – but 'stronger' was a matter of degree. "I'd do it – it doesn't feel right to have a pokedex holder not doing the fighting, but I'd do it. But I stayed in the area because it's such a good place to get stronger, not because my pokemon stand a chance. My record is five wins, but you need twenty before he'll even fight you. And even if by some miracle one of us got there, even his B team would wipe the floor with us before we finished telling him the problem," Andrea answered.

"So what would you suggest I do? Train a team. and fast?"

"If you had found this pokedex years ago, maybe. But Jirachi already landed, and you only have seven days. Training a team that can go toe-to-toe with the battle tower trainers will take much longer, unless..."

"Unless?" Jasper asked.

"Unless there's another way to make him and his pokemon aware of the danger Jirachi poses to us all. Flip to page 485... I wanna see what your old codex says about Heatran."

PKMN Trainer Jasper opened the text, showed it to Fisherwoman Andrea, and smiled; _this_ was the kind of mission he was equipped for, and if Arceus or fate existed (which he still doubted), he could now make sense of why a treasure hunter like him had been entrusted with this pokedex.

Andrea, for her part, skimmed the text and nodded, for it only confirmed a legend she already knew.

"So that's what you had in mind. If you can't talk to the local king... talk to the local god." Jasper said with a smile. "I'm ready."

"You may be, but I'm not sure Bibarel is... and I don't just mean that Nurse Joy hasn't come back with it yet. You struggled with that Psyduck, and the pokemon in Stark Mountain are even stronger. What are its moves?"

"Surf, Strength, Rock Smash, and Rock Climb."

"It's a perfect adventurer's pokemon... at least for Mount Coronet. And all its move slots are full, so I think you'll have to go all the way to Canalave if you want to teach it something else. Damn."

"I'm a trained Move Deleter." Jasper answered. "Four HM moves usually cover Mount Coronet, but it's not the only ruin I've searched, and sometimes you need to switch around techniques with only one pokemon. Bibarel can do everything but fly, but only four of them at a time."

Andrea nodded. "Delete Rock Climb – it's nice to have, but you won't need it in Stark Mountain – and teach it this TM. And switch out Surf for a physical technique; Curse does nothing for special attacks."

"What's in this TM?" Jasper asked.

"It's a move called Curse. It'll increase your pokemon's strength and defense at the expense of its speed. Your Bibarel benefits a lot more than most pokemon from stat boosts, and in a place like this it'll need them." She said. "Take these ten rare candies too... I was planning on using them on Psyduck, but you need them more."

"Wow. That's really generous. Thanks a ton. How can I repay you? You don't want the pokedex, do you?" he asked, opening his wallet and leafing through – Jasper wasn't broke, but ten rare candies was an expense even for a regular League competitor or aristocrat.

"If you've got money to spare, spend it on Ultra Balls; Bibarel alone won't be enough. But you're a treasure hunter, so give me every rare item you find in there, and," Fisherwoman Andrea paused, then said with a smile as she collected her Psyduck and left, "don't forget to save the world for me. Good luck."

* * *

Ruin Maniac Jasper had not considered himself a pokemon trainer before finding the Pokedex, and his prior experience in pokemon battles bore a testament to that fact. Bibarel had protected him from some particularly aggressive wild pokemon, but he had rarely bothered to command it in these conflicts. Instead, he relied on his pokemon's instincts to carry him to safety, which was accomplished far more by Bibarel's speed and his foes' disinclination to chase him than Bibarel's power in battle. Every now and then, a real trainer challenged him on the way through Mount Coronet, and proceeded to easily defeat his lone Bibarel; he considered knocking out a badly wounded foe, only to lose to his opponent's next pokemon, to represent a moral victory in a pokemon battle. And Jasper settled for moral victories, if only in lieu of actual ones.

The town on the way to Stark Mountain was called the Survival Area, and it was a name which filled Jasper with trepidation. Strictly speaking, survival was better than the alternative, but the name itself called attention to the fact that the road to that oasis in the wilderness teemed with a myriad of wild pokemon far stronger than the Psyduck who had nearly killed him.

It is typical for beginner trainers to seek out the largest concentration of weak wild pokemon around. Even a low-level Starly or Rattata can kill a human if provoked and given sufficient time, but parents in towns like Pallet and Twinleaf say "don't go into the tall grass" only on occasion, and treat violations as somewhat dangerous childish exploration. Those of the Fight Area, on the other hand, give their children their own pokemon as bodyguards and punish them strictly if they stray too far, lest they never grow old enough to get pokemon of their own.

And it was on the confusing array of bridges and hills that marked road to the Fight Area's north where Jasper would fight his first real pokemon battle.

The pokemon to confront Jasper on this road was a Machoke who regarded the stairway carved into one of the route's many hills as his own private possession. Jasper and Bibarel attempted to walk around him, but were met by the Machoke stubbornly blocking the way and repeatedly flexing his muscles, and the two had no other path through the wilderness that was as much a maze as a road.

Although Bibarel looked far stronger for the meal of rare candies it had eaten along the way, he wondered if it would truly be enough. But if Jasper wanted to petition Heatran and save the world from Jirachi, he would have to meet this Machoke in battle.

Jasper hurriedly flipped through his paper pokedex, gaining a new appreciation for modern electronics as he slowly made his way to Machoke's page. "Bibarel, start things off with a Curse!" The beaver pokemon stood on its hind legs and shuffled its feet to draw mysterious, occult symbols in the dirt, which soon engulfed the Bibarel in a brilliant blue light.

This new technique was a double-edged sword – for although his pokemon was far stronger after a Curse, it was also far slower. Should it fail, the two of them would be unable to run away. But without the power-up this technique offered, they had no hope of defeating a Machoke – not the kind of Machoke that could survive here in the wild, anyway.

Although it was not an offensive technique, the Machoke understood it as representing the beginning of their battle, and responded accordingly; as Bibarel shuffled its feet in the dirt and focused on increasing its power, the Machoke brought both its muscular, light blue arms diagonally down atop Bibarel's fluffy, furred head.

Jasper had finally arrived at Machoke's page in the pokedex and began hurriedly skimming it for some piece of information that could provide them an advantage, while keeping his other eye on the battle. A traditional pokedex, which listed base stats and attacks, would have been far more useful in this regard; he did learn of their slavery and role in construction, and surmised that the Machoke had once built this stairway for human travelers, but ran away after years of abuse and taken revenge by blocking that very stair. He hoped this meant they could return to the Fight Area safely in the event of a defeat, but explaining its motivations was not the same as explaining its weaknesses – and judging by Machoke's muscles and the way Bibarel had reacted, it was his own pokemon with a weakness in this match.

Fisherwoman's Andrea's gifts had clearly boosted his pokemon impressively – that cross chop looked a lot faster, and that Machoke a lot stronger, than any he had seen back home, but Bibarel had shrugged off the wound and would continue to fight. But he wondered if it could shrug off another one.

And a lone traveler with a knocked-out pokemon was not safe here. Even if this Machoke would not pursue him, the way back could prove far more dangerous than the way there. Not that they had any choice but to try.

"Bibarel, Waterfall!" Jasper shouted.

The Curse had indeed slowed Bibarel as Jasper had feared, and as it summoned the water for its attack, the Machoke connected with a second series of chops to its head. Although Bibarel fought on, the cry of "Barelll!" with its attack sounded as pained as determined, and it looked ready to faint from the slightest punch. But it had not fainted yet.

Bibarel rode up the staircase just like the real waterfalls it had climbed many times, while flooding it with its own water until the stairs came to resemble one. It subtly altered the flow of the cascading falls to create an updraft that carried Bibarel headfirst into Machoke's chest, and slammed its foe right above the golden buckle of its championship belt.

The Machoke bellowed in pain and stumbled back onto the stair, landing in a sitting position. Its strong legs held fast to the muddy ground and avoided being swept away by Bibarel's waters, and the Machoke soon pushed itself back to its feet against the current.

Jasper put his pokedex back into his supply bag and leafed through it for items; without his help, Bibarel would surely lose. A Hyper Potion would heal his pokemon – but Bibarel surely had many more hit points than it used to, and one might not alone be enough to restore it to full health. Even if it worked, they would be very lucky if the potion healed his pokemon faster than Machoke could damage it, and Jasper couldn't afford to throw potions away with no income to speak of and a lot of training left.

It was then that a panicked, flummoxed Jasper grabbed hold of an Ultra Ball, and at last remembered that against wild pokemon, battles didn't have to end in winning or running away. The Machoke, for its part, was struggling too; the waterfall had clearly taken something out of it, and it struggled to position its hands properly while bracing its legs against the rushing water – but against a cursed Bibarel, it would get the next and most important strike.

Unless Jasper's throw was faster.

As Machoke for a third time swung its arms diagonally at Bibarel's head, Jasper hurled his Ultra Ball through the air with the forward step and overarm motion of a baseball pitcher. It wasn't quite a major league fastball, but he had thrown it with everything he had, and his Machoke target was far larger than a catcher's mitt. The ball connected with the fighting pokemon's swinging right arm on the elbow, and saved Bibarel from its attack by absorbing its foe in a brilliant red light.

The yellow and black sphere fell to the ground and shook slowly three times, but rather than watch with the awed anticipation of most trainers, Jasper used the delay to sprint as far away as possible and raised Bibarel's empty pokeball in preparation for them run; if this failed, he wasn't going to let it be the end of him.

When the Ultra Ball stopped shaking, Machoke remained sealed inside, and Jasper greeted the noise that he had captured a new pokemon with a deep sigh of genuine relief.

He would live to fight another day. But for now, it was time to get back to the Pokemon Center; both his pokemon sorely needed healing, and he hoped they could be healed quickly enough.

* * *

Jirachi floated out of the Nimbasa City Subway after its close TKO of a 49th victory in the Battle Subway, uninterested in the prospect of accumulating an ever-greater high score and satisfied that there were no trainers in all Unova worthy of its wishes.

A couple hours later that afternoon, the meteorite on which Jirachi had fallen to Earth mysteriously vanished from the Nacrene City Gym and Museum, many miles away from Jirachi's battles. A new hole in the building's roof of the same size and shape as the meteor supplied the only evidence of what had happened – but the section of the roof in question offered no footholds for human thieves, and the size and weight of the meteor made carrying out the theft unnoticed a tall task for any flying pokemon.

The gym leader and curator, bereft of other explanations, had suggested in despair that the meteor had outright flown away; she was as surprised as anyone when she woke up the next day and found she had been proven right.

At about noon in Kalos – or 7 AM in Unova – reporters around the globe reported a story nearly identical to the one the morning before, except for its location. For Jirachi had crash landed on its meteor in Kalos as it had in Unova, and having conquered the Battle Subway, now sought to find a worthy recipient of its wish in the Battle Maison. Perhaps it would be the Battle Chatelaine, perhaps simply a local, powerful trainer – for every elite trainer within a thousand miles of Kalos, or who had a fast enough pokemon to fly around the world, had flocked to Kiloude City for the opportunity to conquer a legend.


	3. Chapter 3

In his long career as a pokemon trainer, Champion Pierre had only once set foot in the Battle Maison. He had done so not long after claiming his first championship, and had understandably acquired an impressive winning streak – the half-retired trainers languishing in obscurity, despite their past successes, seemed little stronger at best than the ones he had easily defeated to win the Kalos League. And this fact made perfect sense to him; the Maison may host strong trainers, but very few trainers were so strong they got tired of the League, which offered its winners far more fame and money; even the few who came with gods were no match for his team.

On his thirty-ninth battle, Pierre had met a trainer on only her second match, whose career record betrayed that she was weaker by any standard in skill. But her pokemon had just the right type match-ups to counter his own, and a surprise critical hit from her Staraptor's Quick Attack on his Talonflame had sealed her upset victory, and Champion Pierre's shocking defeat.

The experience taught Pierre a lesson which would sustain him after a quarterfinal exit from the League two years later: that luck played a major role in the outcome of any individual pokemon battle. He was of the opinion that the Maison's format only amplified the role of luck – 6 on 6 battles, like in the League, or 3 on 3 battles where both participants could view the roster beforehand, like in many international tournaments, made a bad opening match-up far less likely to lead to a freak defeat. And because freak defeats still occured, Pierre was also firmly of the view that winning percentage and knockout brackets were far better measures of skill than winning streaks.

The Chatelaine, of course, disagreed with him on both these questions.

Yet Pierre had entered the Maison again today, although he wasn't very happy about doing so - after all, Jirachi, in its search for the region's strong trainers, had chosen the Maison over the Kalos League! And Jirachi, despite its poor taste in competitions, was certainly a foe worth confronting.

He hadn't expected it to be in his first match – let alone in Jirachi's. But it was the best draw he could ask for. Fighting Jirachi now meant getting a chance to defeat a god and have his wish to give all the world's pokemon battles a fair format granted, and it meant not worrying about winning enough matches first - or worse, about being too late to get the chance, because Jirachi had already been defeated.

"Aegislash, go!"

Pierre didn't bother to open his poke ball, for his pokemon floated out of it onto the battlefield the moment it heard his words. It looked like a golden sword which had become jammed stabbing an equally golden shield – some scene of carnage from some long-ago battle, dug up by archaeologists centuries after the fact – except that the shield had three eyes, and the sword one of its own. The sword cut through the floor of the Maison under its reanimated power to take its place in the ring, the shield floating in front should anyone seek to sunder it.

Again, a poke ball emerged from behind Jirachi's left wish tag, and the commentators from around the world gathered in the Maison began to describe the Clefable which had opened the Wish Pokemon's team for every match in the subway – only to apologize the instant the ball opened. For Jirachi had apparently grown dissatisfied with Clefable's performance against the Subway Master, or felt that allowing global opponents to study his team made defeating it too easy, for no Clefable emerged from the ball.

In its place was a pokemon whose first form was found throughout this arm of the galaxy, but who rarely gained the experience to evolve without landing on this planet. But this particular Beeheyem had visited the planet before and evolved before leaving, and when it was too broke to buy a ticket on a spaceship, Jirachi had granted its wish to return to this world. Evolution had distinguished it from its forebears with a brown color, flashing lights, and buglike eyes, along with the certitude that the ultimate question would be answered not in deep thought, but in a Pokemon battle!

Champion Pierre, in his long reign atop the Kalos Pokemon League, had been challenged by a great many trainers, and defeated a dazzling array of pokemon from around the world – a couple of which, like Jirachi, were spoken about far more often in legends than encountered in reality. Beheeyem was not among them, and he could only imagine a single reason why.

"You use a pokemon that weak against humanity's greatest trainers? Truly, Smeargle was right; the gods are not so wise. Aegislash, Shadow Ball!"

Champion Pierre also knew no more about Beeheyem than their type, for he had never considered them worthy of study. Aegislash stirred the air with its sword, channeling energy from the world of the dead with each slash and swiftly building it into a massive black sphere, which it then served with its shield in the direction of its extraterrestrial foe.

On the other side of the arena, Beeheyem was doing the exact same thing, and ghosts are as vulnerable as psychic pokemon to the powers of the afterlife, for while thinkers are reminded their time in the world of the living is all too short, the dead are reminded they should have already passed on. Beeheyem was a strong and resilient pokemon, and while it was psychic in type, its mind was simply too alien for Aegislash to pull the right horrors out of the shadows; the damage was far from a knockout blow.

The ball Beheeyem shot back from its color-coded hand hit the vulnerable center of Aegislash's blade, for it could not return its shield from its attacking position in time. And it carried all the right images – tales of that Aegislash's life as a brave knight and great king in the world of the living, nearly two thousand years ago, before its body passed on and it tried to reclaim its power through the shadows. They were whispered together with memories of what flesh and blood felt like, and carried a suggestion that anyone could gain political power these days if the people supported them and they trained strong enough pokemon of their own – all drawing to the conclusion, as it was engulfed in the Shadow Ball, that it was time to finally move on.

Aegislash was left sprawled on the arena floor, its traumatized spirit all but absent from its body; it would return eventually, but only out of loyalty to its trainer, who seemed if anything every bit as shocked - not by painful memories or some other trauma, but by the opening result of the battle. Pierre hated losing, and he hated losing to a gimmick pokemon far more; he felt that Jirachi had made a mockery of him and taken a lead in the process. But he had lost far more first rounds than he had matches.

Again, Pierre raised a poke ball and opened it, but this time he first whispered a command to its resident pokemon. A dark blur with a slightly bluish tint shot across the room, and a sharp, webbed foot from that blur connected with Beheeyem's neck before it could even sight its foe. When the blur stopped moving, the Beeheyem had fainted, and Pierre's Greninja stood at the edge of Jirachi's trainer's box, staring daggers from its bulging eyes at its legendary foe.

But Jirachi's defeat would leave its teammates unable to continue, so Pierre and his Greninja would confront another pokemon first. No poke ball, however, emerged from behind Jirachi's wish tag. Instead, the faded letter 'I' written at the beginning of the tag's wish – the beginning of the phrase "I wish for," undoubtedly followed by some wish from at least a thousand years ago on this planet, or the wish of some alien in distant space – floated off the page like a 3-dimensional projection, and shifted in shape until a white eyeball appeared in the letter's center.

One may surmise, based on the success of Beheeyem, that Champion Pierre ought to have treated his opponent more seriously; even if humans could not often tap the power of these pokemon, he was battling a god. Instead, he burst out laughing at the Unown, ordering his Greninja to try yet another Night Slash through his chuckles; the Greninja obliged, but the webbed foot's cut across the psychic-type's top half failed to cripple his foe.

The vast majority of Unown are useless alone, and Jirachi was constrained by the rules of the competition to summon only a single letter; if allowed the full force of what was written on its wish tag, the battle could have been won in an instant.

Yet the written language of Kalos (and indeed, that of most of the world) is derived from the Unown, although the sacred meanings of its letters are closest to the tongue of Unova. There are four Unown which can communicate a concept alone, and among them, the one Jirachi chose represented the most powerful – a statement of supreme willpower, of determination, of egotism, a letter used from the littlest Magikarp to Arceus to describe one's self.

Unown I was assured of nothing more than its own existence, but that assurance represented a powerful shield against any attack; when hit with its foe's night slash, it answered, despite its body's severe injury, with a renewed determination that seemed to make it even stronger, and the statement "I will not lose." And that statement was transformed into magic and smacked into the fragile Greninja with a powerful blow – one which would have defeated it, were it not for the sash wrapped around its tongue that gave it too the willpower to fight on.

Pierre had underestimated the Unown, but he was not wrong this time about the round's outcome. For living things sleep, and hunger, and die, and although the force of will is a mighty thing, some weaknesses can not be overcome through determination alone. Unown endured one night slash, but Greninja sliced it vertically along its body the second time, and it could not endure the second blow. The Unown lost its form and returned to the ink on Jirachi's wish tag from where it was summoned, which left the Star of Wishes itself to enter the ring.

Greninja slashed at its star-hatted foe as it had its minions, its bladed and webbed foot leaving a deep gash in the god of wishes' stomach. But an unfazed Jirachi calmly opened its mouth and fired a beam of electricity into the Greninja's long tongue, at last defeating the Frog of Kalos – a species which competed with Politoed for the title of its national pokemon.

But the exchange only increased Champion Pierre's confidence. "Greninja, you did your part. It's mine! Victory is mine! My wish will be granted! The meaning of pokemon battles will be restored! Talonflame, come out and use Flare Blitz!"

The red and gray bird with black-tipped wings caught fire and flew at extraordinary speed towards the tiny god, and Jirachi's lightweight metal frame – perhaps mithril or aluminium, perhaps something only found on a far more distant world - absorbed the impact, and Talonflame seemed nearly as wounded by the collision as Jirachi. Although it was on fire and badly wounded, Jirachi focused its eyes and used its psychic powers to show Talonflame the consequences of its own wish; the shock to the bird's mind was enough to finish it off.

* * *

Jirachi had won its first match – but as a disturbed Jasper watched the eagerness with which its first opponent had made his wish, and how close the Champion had come to victory, he wondered if he could possibly reach Heatran before Jirachi lost and doomed the world. His two pokemon had finished healing not long after the broadcast began, so he left the pokemon center, and hoped against hope that he wouldn't be too late.

The road to Stark Mountain was a long one, and despite becoming a regular visitor at the Fight Area Pokemon Center over the last day, he seemed no closer to reaching the Survival Area – let alone Stark Mountain – than he had when he caught Machoke. The wild pokemon he had fought so far were just strong enough to make his road long and arduous, but his Ultra Balls were few, and none of his foes thus far had seemed a worthy teammate, or even close to being Bibarel's equal – it was simply that the cumulative toll of fighting them was enough to make him turn back.

To a more perceptive trainer, these facts meant that Bibarel and Machoke were indeed getting far stronger through their constant battles, and that Jasper had accomplished as much training in a single day as many trainers do in a month. To Pokemon Trainer Jasper, however, it only meant that he needed another power-up and fast.

The fact that one of his pokemon was not yet fully evolved struck Jasper as exactly what he needed to change. But as every trainer knew, Machoke only evolved through trading - and while Jasper hadn't long been a real pokemon trainer, he had seen his share of frescoes communicating exactly that fact in his years of exploration. But he was far from home, there was only one person around who he trusted enough to trade him back his Machoke, and Fisherwoman Andrea had helped him more than enough already.

Jasper hadn't seen any other trainers yet on the road to the Survival Area, but this was primarily from lack of trying. The Iron Law of Pokemon Battles – the most ancient and sacred custom of the sport – decreed that if two trainers' eyes met on the road, whatever their circumstances, they would have to have a battle. And as Jasper was probably the weakest trainer on the entire island, and a boy who feared for his safety should his pokemon faint, he had spent his time (at least after the first battle or two) never looking too far in front of himself, eyes peeled to the ground, and walking in the opposite direction from anything that looked like a human leg or foot, even though it typically belonged to a local fighting pokemon.

But the maze of route 225 did not allow a trainer to watch the ground forever. As he ventured up one of the road's many hills, Jasper's eyes accidentally met that of an old man in traditional clothing, albeit from traditions far more recent than Jirachi's previous visit.

"Two on two okay? I've been training for the doubles tower lately." The man asked, and Jasper nodded. "I'm Veteran Eiji, by the way."

"Ruin ma- Pokemon Trainer Jasper. Bibarel, Machoke, come out!"

"Rampardos, Omastar, go!"

"You look old, but I didn't think you were from the Mesozoic. Extinct pokemon, huh? Machoke, DynamicPunch on Omastar! Bibarel, Curse!"

Eiji smiled. "Not extinct pokemon. Lazarus pokemon. It's nice when you've lived this long to have pokemon that have lived a million times longer... what about you? I don't see an Eviolite on that Machoke. Head Smash, Spike Cannon."

"I haven't had the chance to evolve it yet." Jasper answered with a sigh as their pokemon clashed – Machoke charging at the Omastar through its spiky suppressive barrage, raising a focused, determined fist at its foe, and left blindsided when Rampardos rammed its spiked head into the side of its torso, knocking it out before it could connect. "I know Machoke's too weak, but I need to trade it if it's gonna evolve, and I don't know anyone here. You never know if someone will just run off with your Machamp and leave you with their unwanted pokemon... Bibarel, Waterfall on Rampardos."

"You know, there is a way to do this without trading – though it was all but forgotten long before this era. Have you ever wondered why going from one trainer to another makes a pokemon evolve? Shell Smash." The old man asked, as the boosted Bibarel flung itself on its own water at a Rampardos that seemed to have injured its own head as much as it had Machoke's. The blow was sufficient to take the Rampardos out, but an unchallenged Omastar was able to jettison the curled, spiky shell that ordinarily covered its vulnerable head and most of its back.

Omastar are not known to have used this technique until modern times, despite the many fossil finds (most famously in a cavern on Mount Coronet) depicting large groups of Omastar engaged in something akin to war. Shell Smash is a technique borrowed from the Clamperl, who evolve into Gorebyss this way, and Gorebyss are not known from the fossil record until the Triassic, at which point the Omastar were already extinct.

"No, I haven't. Why? Waterfall." Jasper asked.

"Trading a pokemon makes it think that it has be abandoned by one trainer for being too weak. Whatever the trainer receives in return, pokemon understand being traded as being given up on by one trainer, and needing to prove itself to another lest they be released into the wild. In some species, this fear unlocks in them the ability to evolve instantly. But a trade is not the only way to make them feel that need. Hydro Pump."

An Omastar's shell is more useful than a Clamperl's, and without one Omastar, while powerful, are extremely fragile pokemon which still more often than not lack the speed to make the first move. But Bibarel had slowed itself significantly to power up its attacks and was not a fast pokemon to begin with. As Bibarel rode towards its opponent atop a sideways waterfall, Omastar answered by sliding away the gooey skin on all five of its star-shaped limbs and launching five blasts of water into the waterfall - the largest of the five from its normally shell-covered head.

The five blasts of water converged on Bibarel, and its continued momentum and efforts to power through the water to Omastar only increased its injuries, until its own water stopped flowing and the beaver lost consciousness. "Bibarel!" A visibly panicked Jasper yelled, raised his poke ball, and called his fainted pokemon back before the Omastar could wound it any further.

"I don't think your Bibarel's quite at my Omastar's level, but it was a water attack on a water pokemon and it only fainted; it shouldn't be that serious." Eiji said, but his words did little to alleviate Jasper's panic. "You okay, kid?"

"I've come a long way from the Fight Area, and both my pokemon fainted. The wild pokemon here are so much stronger than where I'm from... I don't know how I'll be able to get back there safely. You probably think I'm stupid, don't you... accepting a two on two challenge instead of demanding one on one when I'd be in this kind of danger if I lost."

Eiji laughed, and pointed to his right – although in the maze of hills and trees, Jasper had to walk across the battlefield to see the small group of houses his opponent was showing him.

Compared to the Fight Area – let alone the places in Sinnoh Jasper had traveled, before Sinnoh started waking up and he fled north – the Survival Area wasn't much. Although he had grown up in a rural area near Mount Coronet, the few houses and one road of the clearing barely seemed to count as a village even by his standards. But it did have a Pokemon Center, and Jasper felt as though he would forever be grateful not to journey back to the Fight Area alone.

Jasper thanked his opponent profusely, handed over his small amount of remaining change, then made his way into the Survival Area and headed straight for the Pokemon Center.

* * *

It was not until PKMN Trainer Jasper handed his poke balls over to the nurse that he was relaxed enough to realize what reaching the Survival Area _meant_; that he was halfway to Heatran's lair. If his pokedex was right, and Jirachi waited a week before granting its awful wish, the speed at which he had made his way there meant that he had time – provided, of course, that Heatran listened and convinced its trainer to do something about Jirachi.

If the battle with the Kalos Champion was any guide, however, he was almost certainly too late. Jasper briefly turned on the television and was relieved to see Jirachi still battling – the scoreboard claimed him to be on match 18, but it could have been match 100 for all he cared, so long as the god of doomed desires hadn't granted anyone their wish.

Machoke's poke ball had been quickly returned to him, for the Rampardos' head smash had only caused mild injuries; it had been enough to win the fight, but his pokemon seemed to bounce back with ease, while Bibarel looked like it had spent far too long in the Hydro Pump and would require more prolonged attention.

As he again waited in the Pokemon Center for his pokemon to heal (an activity he had grown very used to these past couple days) Jasper held Machoke's ball in its hand and wondered if he could bring himself to evolve it. Even if he found a trade partner, this Machoke had already been abandoned once by humans, and clearly hadn't taken it well; now that he understood what evolving a Machoke really _was_, his urgency had been tempered by second thoughts.

Machoke was a new pokemon for him, not an age-old comrade like Bibarel – but the past day's training and its initial capture had taught him to respect and cherish his pokemon, and if he truly was a pokemon trainer, then he had a duty to treat his pokemon right, however long he had owned them.

But if he failed to strengthen his pokemon enough and couldn't stop Jirachi's wish, his inaction would harm far more than just his Machoke. He was still in part a Ruin Maniac, he had discovered that codex when he did for a reason, whether it was Arceus or fate, and it was no easier for him to doom the world through inaction than to betray his Machoke for power.

"What am I supposed to do?" Jasper whispered to himself, as he shed a single tear which landed on his Machoke's poke ball. Perhaps the tear had landed on the button at just the right angle to open it; more likely, in the process of pondering what to do with his pokemon, he had unconsciously opened it himself.

Machoke emerged from the ball and stood before his trainer in the lobby of the pokemon center, and tried to cheer him up with energetic flexing and grunting – clearly words of reassurance, although Jasper could not entirely understand the speech of pokemon.

"But we lost. And if I can't beat some trainer on the road, how am I even going to get to Heatran? How are we going to convince it to talk to the Tower Tycoon, how can we make the world know how dangerous Jirachi is?" he asked his pokemon, opening his pocket codex to Jirachi's page, oblivious to the question of whether Machoke could even read. "We need to get stronger..."

"Machooooke!" The fighting pokemon yelled and flexed its arms; with a single look at the ancient text (or perhaps the disturbing illustration above it), it understood. A white light engulfed the Machoke's body as both its arms split in two, and when it faded the pokemon was more muscular, with a more determined face in a lighter shade of blue. And, of course, it had four arms – enough for the rapid punches for which its final form was known. "Machaaaaamp!"

A tearful, grateful Jasper embraced his pokemon, then returned it to its poke ball. Before long, a fully healed Bibarel would join him, and the trainer and his pair of pokemon would head out again to the northeast.

The night seemed unseasonably warm, far warmer than the last one he had spent in the Fight Area. Jasper had yet to realize it, but this difference in temperature, although significant, was entirely typical of the Survival Area; Fight Area was warmer only on those rare days when Heatran was called to fight in the Battle Tower.

And Jasper would get even warmer as the night continued. For he had passed the last pokemon center on the road east to Heatran's mountain, and he could not afford a good night's sleep on this fateful night.


	4. Chapter 4

Millions of years ago, the Torterra named Sinnoh made a wish upon a star-shaped millennial devil. She had lost her family in the prior few seasons, her mate slain and devoured by a Tyrantum, and the eggs and Turtwig she escaped with picked off one by one by flocks of Archeops and Aerodactyl.

The elders had warned her that any who made a wish on Jirachi would live to regret it, and that whatever words you used, however wholesome your desire, it would find a way to grant your wish that turned it into a horrific curse. But Sinnoh did not care; she thought that she had already lost everything she could lose except for her life, was terrified of losing that too, and simply could not imagine that the world could possibly get any worse, let alone as the result of her wish.

She had seen the shooting star Jirachi rode fall from the sky, and had traversed most of the Laurasian continent in a week before catching up to the devil and making her pure-hearted, desperate wish: "I wish that the Torterra could no longer be killed."

And Jirachi had answered her by rising back into space and falling back to Earth – this time on an asteroid, not merely a meteor – and landed in the very spot where Sinnoh had made that wish.

The bolide impact did not kill a single Torterra, for the reserves built up in their trees were more than enough to sustain them through the decade without light, but the same could be said of few others. Aerodactyl, Archeops, and Tyrantum were wiped out by the cataclysm, as were the overwhelming majority of pokemon species, herbivore and carnivore alike, on the planet. And Jirachi had found a loophole; Sinnoh met many more grieving mothers in that decade, for no Turtwig and Grotle are known to have survived what scientists now call a mass extinction, but the Torterra word more accurately translates as "the apocalypse".

Jirachi had genuinely granted its wish; the firestorms and tsunamis, while injuring many a Torterra, did not slay a single one, leaving the entire species to watch in horror at the virtual destruction of their biosphere. The pokemon species that fed on grown Torterra were all among those annihilated, and Jirachi's magic prevented any of the species which evolved to replace them from even trying to prey upon them. Even the diseases of old age – a relative term for a pokemon that lives longer than trees – no longer slew them; Torterra only took longer and longer naps, and grew larger and larger with age, until those of Sinnoh's generation (and many others far younger than her, but far older than most living things on Earth) were no longer seen as pokemon, but mistaken for islands, mountains, or other natural features by the rest of the world's population.

Jirachi had landed, according to the calendar, sixty six thousand and thirty eight times since Sinnoh's wish – give or take a few. And throughout her millions of years of life, Sinnoh had sought only to atone for the catastrophe she had unwittingly wrought by forcing it to undo her wish. But every time since her wish that Jirachi had landed on this world, she had failed to track it down – whether because it landed on the wrong part of the planet, or while she was asleep, or because someone else had beaten her to the punch.

Sinnoh had, in other respects, lived an extremely exemplary life; when the land on which the holy mountain of Coronet stood threatened to fall into the sea, she had offered it refuge on her back. The gods themselves congregated in the forests and hills of Sinnoh, but Dialga would not rewind time for her, and Arceus claimed that Jirachi's magic was so alien that even the creator could not rewind its curse; given the rise of Man since then, however, Sinnoh did not entirely believe them.

And man had come to Sinnoh's verdant forests, and civilizations rose and fell in the space of her hibernations. Even when awake, she acted with lethargy, spending most of her time floating in place for fear of disrupting the many who called her back a home. Although the first settlers recognized the island's climate and shores as resembling a Torterra and worshiped her as a kind of Earth goddess, in time the island had become so built up, and her naps so long, that by this era history was mistaken for legends, and those legends now languished in obscurity.

But the modern era had also brought something else with it; worldwide communication. Although tracking down Jirachi's prior appearances required a great deal of luck, television and the internet moved information even faster than a Pidgeot. Within a day, the whole world knew Jirachi had landed, and a slumbering Torterra was awoken by the furor of conversation on her back, in which she recognized the name of an old demon amidst a barrage of conversation.

And although it might create havoc for those on her back, Sinnoh would stop at nothing to atone; the phrase "Undo my wish" was too unambiguous for even Jirachi to ruin.

Fisherwoman Andrea had no more successes to show for her battles in the Tower after Jasper had left. The Psyduck she had captured when rescuing him (now already a Golduck) had proven strong, and Gyarados was good as ever, but none of the pokemon she tried including as the third member of her team seemed to measure up: her Whiscash, whom she had included most, was too weak to solve her problem with electric types.

And so Andrea had gone back to the Fight Area coast to resume her fishing, but the water had changed. What had been a calm and relatively narrow strait now seemed no different from the other seas around the island, and many of the pokemon she spotted fishing from her Gyarados, such as Wailord, had never in her memory ventured into the waters separating the north island from Sinnoh.

Something had changed drastically, and although she would have to track down Jasper to know exactly what pokemon's entry in his book had told him this would happen, Andrea had a very good idea what the text had to do with his decision to flee Sinnoh – and it wasn't just about stopping Jirachi. She urged her Gyarados forward, unfurled her map, and searched for the strait's few landmarks, going further and further out to sea until her suspicions were confirmed: that there was now nothing but open ocean between the Fight Area and Almia. That either Sinnoh was no longer where it should be, or worse, that Sinnoh was no more.

The High Priestess of Arceus, _de facto_ leader of Sinnoh, was nearly as concerned by the unseasonably hot day as she was concerned by the reports coming into her Grand Temple in Jubilife. Never in Sinnoh's three thousand years of recorded history had a day suddenly become this warm in midwinter, nor was there any obvious cause; the sun's position in the sky seemed somehow off, but it had not shone overhead with a blazing heat, the day was still reasonably cloudy, and the island's volcanoes remained dormant.

But given the disaster apparently unfolding now on Sinnoh's coast, Mount Coronet itself might have blown. The friends and family members of fishermen, sailors, and foreign tourists across the region were reporting their loved ones lost at sea – and this was not in the euphemistic sense, for these individuals were very much alive, but bafflingly unable to find Sinnoh's location. Air traffic had also been grounded – a fact she learned from reading reports from Almia's main airport, where most flights had been diverted after finding only water where Sinnoh used to be. Sinnoh's own airports had been ordered closed, while a few aircraft and flying pokemon had launched to investigate the mystery: they found nothing but open ocean, and feared to venture out further after confirming they were no longer in sight of Almia or the Fight Area, or indeed any other land mass at all.

It was not that everyone seeking to return from Sinnoh had gotten horribly lost, only that the island of Sinnoh was itself no longer where it belonged!

The High Priestess knew of a single pokemon with the power to do this, and announced a grand ceremony at the Holy Shrine of Mount Coronet, stating that they had neglected one of their many gods and that only the grandest of festivals could convince Palkia to reconsider its divine wrath. Although the festival's historic antecedents were grand pilgrimages announced well in advance so that people could make it across the isle, in this era both vehicles and flying pokemon were widespread, so the majority of Sinnoh's population had assembled at the mountain in the space of a few hours. They chanted in such great numbers and with such desperate enthusiasm that Palkia itself emerged to answer their calls – but as surprising as a personal appearance by the local god was, they were even more surprised by its answer.

For Sinnoh's people had never imagined that it was not their gods, but the knowledge of their predecessors they had neglected. For Palkia explained that the island had moved because the giant Torterra on which the people of Sinnoh had made their homes had woken up – while Sinnoh's people, down to tbe High Priestess, had forgotten it was a giant Torterra in the first place. And that this Torterra was a living pokemon, and she had the right of free will and had saved Mount Coronet from falling into the sea, so Palkia would not and could not override its decision to shift its location, however great the havoc it wreaked on the lifestyle of Sinnoh's people.

Many protested, the farmers and fishermen most of all – for the farmers had planted many crops that could not grow if this heat continued, and even those fishermen who had not lost friends and comrades had no assurance that when Sinnoh stopped moving, it would rest in a place teeming with marine life where they could resume their livelihoods. A shrine dedicated to the Unovan god Landorus sprang up not long after the festival, for although it was (presumably – they couldn't place Torterra on a map) too far away to help them, a god of abundance and plenty was exactly what Sinnoh's people would need to cancel out the disruption.

None of them realized that Torterra had only temporarily entered the tropics and the southern hemisphere, and that its ultimate destination was only moderately warmer than Sinnoh, for it was next to Kalos' shores.

The adjoining regions of Almia and Fiore, on the northern tip of the island which was until recently directly south of Sinnoh, were known around the world as peaceful nature preserves, twin Safari Zones collectively the size of Kanto.

Its people had long cherished this status and resisted the outside world's custom of pokemon battles; there was a time when the term "capturing a pokemon" referred to one of the region's Rangers calming a wild pokemon down and gaining its temporary cooperation to help them capture criminals or avoid traps, and it is said that they used this term out of ignorance towards the rest of the world's hobbies.

In truth, even the people of Almia and Fiore could not blot out the world forever. If they maintained their independence, it was only because neighboring regions realized that their pokemon did not stay in Almia and Fiore, but provided a vital source of replenishment for wild pokemon populations elsewhere diminished by battle and capture.

In the warring states era, Fiore's kings had surreptitiously ordered the Rangers to round up a few powerful pokemon as tribute to dangerous warlords in exchange for them leaving the place alone; Almia was formed from a rebellion when the people in one province found out what their king was doing, but the revolution's leaders soon found that they too had to choose between tribute and conquest.

But the pokemon world is a far more peaceful place today, and Sinnoh and Kanto had long respected Almia and Fiore's customs; if they felt under a state of siege, it was only because it culturally remained them against the world. When Black and White stopped Team Plasma, the world rejoiced, but Almia visibly mourned. Pokemon battles had been long banned in the territory, and poke balls confiscated at the border, but as migration brought in residents okay with battles and the region sought to use foreign tourism to get through hard economic times, these laws were relaxed. Today, only empty poke balls are confiscated, at least in ordinary circumstances.

But the disappearance of Sinnoh was not an ordinary circumstance.

Jasper's path to the north was followed by a few fishermen, mostly those far enough north and with poor enough boats that they feared they could not cross the sea left behind by Sinnoh's departure. A few airplanes were diverted to Kanto, as Almia and Fiore's airports could only handle so many flights. But the vast majority of those stranded outside Sinnoh headed to the immediate south, to a land that had always prided itself on its peace and safety, but always been suspicious of foreigners who used pokemon for war.

And when they came as refugees, many of Almia and Fiore considered their suspicions confirmed.

The new arrivals were simply so numerous that it was impossible for the region's government to confiscate all empty poke balls; feeding and sheltering tens of thousands of sudden visitors at once was hard enough without searching them for contraband. Nor did they have a place to store them if they did confiscate: many trainers, especially fisherman, carried bags full of poke balls at all times, while a visitor who had intentionally arrived knew the laws in advance and typically left their poke balls at home. And if not properly disposed of, an empty poke ball was just as dangerous in the hands of a citizen who disliked the region's taboos or of another refugee as it was in the hands of the proper owner.

Perhaps some of the trainers were genuinely ignorant of Almia and Fiore's laws, for although those who came in airplanes were debriefed in airports, the refugees from the sea had landed not only in designated ports, but nearly everywhere along the coast. Perhaps some were sad, distressed, scared for home and family, and took to capturing local pokemon as stress relief and a return to their normal habits, whatever the law. Or perhaps the rumors which started the riots were simply false, the product of nothing more than a nasty, xenophobic culture clash and the stresses and burdens of a sudden, massive refugee crisis, together with rumors of the world's imminent end.

In any event, word soon spread through Fiore that a fisherman from Sinnoh had not only been capturing wild pokemon (which was bad enough) but had tracked down and captured Manaphy, their guardian god itself, in a Master Ball – and that peace could only be restored to the island once the pokemon trainers were stripped of their pokemon and driven back into the sea. Once that happened, it was claimed, either Manaphy would break the Master Ball's spell, or a Phione would evolve to replace Manaphy as the land's guardian.

The rioters, although far more numerous, were poorly armed, for they lived in a world where pokemon training was everything. The weapons they improvised – bricks and stones, knives and baseball bats, and whatever household chemicals they could turn into bombs – were a poor match for those armed with any evolved pokemon, and species from Garchomp to Staraptor admirably protected their trainers and the trainers who could only claim a Finneon or Bidoof alike.

But some trainers were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with no strong pokemon nearby, and badly beaten, killed, or saw their pokemon stolen and released into Fiore's forests, too far away to find their way home.

Fiore's government by and large sided with the refugees, and did what they could to protect them, but they had no military force, and the Rangers were ill-equipped to handle a massive xenophobic riot that threatened to turn into revolution, although they did their best to both protect the refugees and rescue any recently released domestic pokemon - many of which threatened to become invasive species if left alone. They called on neighboring regions for aid, and Almia's rangers soon joined Fiore's, but the Kanto forces were feared more likely to inflame the public than defuse them, so they were employed primarily in escorting the refugees who had been scared away by the riots south to Kanto.

Fiore would survive the crisis, but its image as a land of peace would not, and a disgusted Manaphy would continue to avoid the Fiore Grand Shrine for long after the riots concluded.

As the land to the south burned with riots, and as Sinnoh continued its journey around the world, Jasper continued his own journey to an audience with Heatran. The road from the Survival Area, considering his trials in getting there, was not particularly difficult – but half of it was land, and half of it was water, and although Andrea was technically right in that it could be traversed without climbing up steep rock faces or crossing the open bay, doing so took significantly longer than doing it the old-fashioned way.

So Jasper had put his move deleting skills to use, as he had many times before, and Surf and Rock Climb were added to Curse and Waterfall as he crossed the cliffs and bays of Route 227. None of the local pokemon troubled him – perhaps because the night's pokemon were less ferocious than the day's, perhaps because once Machamp figured out how to maintain its balance on Bibarel's fur and to climb back on when it fell, the wild pokemon who challenged them were easily defeated or scared away.

The trainer and his pokemon quickly made it to Stark Mountain, and no sooner had they entered the volcano than did Jasper spot an item – it looked like a technical machine - glistening in the distance. Eager to pick it up – and to repay the trainer who had saved his life when he arrived her, and whose gifts had made him strong enough not to need saving again – he raced over to grab it.

Were Jasper more alert instead of nearing the end of an exhausting day, or were he less eager to find Stark Mountain's treasures, he would've noticed the subtly different texture of the rock near the item and its slightly lighter shade, and remembered to apply the old tests for traps. Instead, he only realized what had happened when the ground began to give way.

"Trapdoor! Bibarel, catch me!" he shouted to his pokemon as he hurled its ball to the ground floor of the cavern, while plummeting not far behind it himself. But this was far from the first pit trap Jasper and what had long been his only pokemon had encountered in their lives: Bibarel materialized on the ground, shielded from injuries by its poke ball, and raced over to cushion its trainer from his fall.

Had the trap been limited to a pit, a Ruin Maniac of Jasper's experience would have easily climbed back out on Biabrel's back. But he soon noticed the twenty-four eyes surrounding him, and realized that whoever sought to protect Stark Mountain's treasures had placed another, far more formidable obstacle in his way.

It wasn't a full Monster House, but perhaps he'd prefer one; instead, Jasper faced four giant Dugtrio, whose central heads had grown to nearly his height, and whose side heads were the size of a normal Dugtrio's center head. But he would not be intimidated. "Four opponents, four arms. Machamp, you know what to do – I'll recall you once you hold them off. Bibarel, let's climb out of here!"

Machamp emerged from the pokeball and obediently smashed the Dugtrio over their heads like playing a traditional game of whack-a-diglett, but as Bibarel tried to escape the battle with its trainer by climbing the face of the trap's cliff, a funnel of sand swirled seemingly automatically from the four Dugtrio, and its paws could not get a hold of any rocks; they remained trapped in a rumbling arena where it quickly grew painful to even stand.

"Machamp, keep it up!" Jasper yelled – he hadn't ordered Machamp to use anything other than Cross Chop yet, but he also hadn't needed to. "Bibarel, I know your physical moves are better one-on-one... but in a fight like this, you should Surf your foes away!" The narrow cavern began to fill with water, and the four Dugtrio were each swept away, too small and defensively weak to hold their underground positions against the flash flood of Jasper's Bibarel – Machamp, although somewhat hurt, was large and strong enough to shrug off the area attack.

But as the Dugtrio were carried into the distance, the stream Bibarel carried them with swiftly evaporated away, and a heavy steam filled the already warm cavern with a new humidity. Machamp and Bibarel instinctively turned to the source of the evaporation, fearing a new opponent or simply the Dugtrio's renewed freedom of action – but Jasper understood that there was only one pokemon in Stark Mountain that could possibly be responsible, recalled his two pokemon, and assumed a position of prayer.

"You seem quite desperate to petition me." the vaguely turtle-shaped god of the volcano spoke – its voice raspy and clanging like gears, but a _voice_ all the same, not telepathy or the repeated sound of its own name, with tones and gesticulating communicating the rest of the meaning.

"I-I" Jasper began, stuttering and scrambling for what to say; he still didn't believe in Arceus the creator, but if Heatran wasn't a god, it was still a talking and extraordinarily powerful pokemon, and that was reason enough for awe. "I am. For if this text is true, and I believe it is," he said, holding aloft its codex, "then our world is faced with a cataclysmic danger."

Heatran seemed unfazed by his words, or perhaps it was simply that the emotions of the gods could not be detected by the living, or that its armored, steel cage of a face could not express such a thing. "I have not forgotten what Jirachi is, even if humanity has."

"So you already knew. Can you do anything to stop it?" a desperate Jasper pleaded. "If the Tower Tycoon makes a wish..."

"I can not, for I can not leave my island, or everyone here would freeze." Heatran answered. "And the final battle shall not be here. Even the Tycoon has already left for Kalos, despite my warnings. So many trainers have gathered there from around the world already that I do not think Jirachi will have reason to leave it until it has granted a wish, and more are coming every hour."

Jasper said nothing, and the tears of desperation flowing from his eyes evaporated as quickly as they fell.

"But I think there is a reason you have found that codex. You were right to come here, but now that you've grown stronger, you should follow the Tower Tycoon to Kalos."

"How? Even getting here took a day, and Kalos is so much further away from your island than Sinnoh was." Jasper asked.

"There is a flock of Pidgey and Pidgeotto that roosts on this mountain, led by a lone Pidgeot. I trust you know what to do with one, and as for fighting Jirachi, that item I baited the trap with was a Pidgeotite. I think Arceus led you to that book for a reason, and it will help you on every step of your journey." Heatran answered.

Jasper offered a traditional prayer of gratitude – this time in person, not in the shrines he had long neglected – and made his way back to the outside of the mountain, grabbing the mega stone and many other treasures along the way.

The sun had come up by the time he exited the cave, but an exhausted Jasper finally began to feel hope: maybe he could stop Jirachi after all. But now that Heatran had given him a mega stone, another realization dawned on him; this would not simply be a matter of contacting the right person, or exposing the right legend.

To win, he might have to defeat a legendary pokemon, despite his lack of experience even in gym battles – and to make matters worse, Jasper was starting to believe that legendary pokemon really were gods.


End file.
